Touched
by starchilde
Summary: ChamberMeltdown, set in an AU -- Based on thegifted at greatestjournal.com. Basically? Jono has a face, is engaged to Paige, Tabby is.. Er, herself. It's sort of plotless, and was written more for the players in the group than a general audience.


_It's not like that_, she repeats to herself, growing tired of the way her head voice sounds. It's still got that drawl, the slight twinge on the end of certain syllables that's enough to make her cringe and bring back memories of double wide trailers, studded belts, and the way it felt to be completely helpless. .. _ This_ was a different kind of helpless, though; something told her Jono wasn't going to put her over his knee and beat her until she bled. _ And now you're thinking too much; aren't you supposed to be upset, Tabitha?_ But how can you possibly be so upset when the psionic residue of the best dance of your life lingers so persistently on your skin?

Determined to take her mind off the subject, she's opened up one of Katie's magazines (Seventeen - There's a picture of the Olsens looking glamorous and underfed on the cover, while Tabby wonders how people can allow themselves to look so hungry) and proceeds, full steam ahead, with the article entitled, 'Quiz: Is he your type?'

(Knowing full well that no, he wasn't. He was _ dating _someone. Shit, if what she'd heard was true? He was _ engaged_.)

(And she was just a silly strike stupid /strike girl.)

While women were a dubious endeavor (to say the least), Jonothon knew there would always be one thing worth turning to: Music. It was the typical teenage cliché, finding a soul mate in the spaces between the notes on a scale or the strings of a guitar, but nobody pulled off the tortured artist look the way he did, and in some corner of his mind, Jono knew this. Unlike the majority of his peers, however, he had the skill and finesse and raw talent needed to pull it off. Seated indian-style on the foot of his bed, he pulled a melody out of the forefront of his mind.

Punk rock hadn't ever really been his thing, and the goth scene had called him more fiercely with it's siren song of black on black on black, but there was a soft spot in his heart for The Decendents, and humming along, started to strum.

Love songs, however silly, always made him think of His Girl, with her broad smile and long hair; her blue eyes and the easy way she walked. They were opposites through and through, but it was impossible to deny the way she pulled his heart along by the strings and brought feelings to the surface he'd long forgotten. He pictured her then, moving like a ghost through his memory while he watched her. Barefoot, she walked along the outside of his mind, sure-footed on the gray and otherwise broken landscape, backlit by some unseen force. As his eyes traveled up, she turned around to regard him from over one shoulder, laughing a coquettish, uncharacteristic laugh that isn't

Pencil in her mouth, Tabitha chews the eraser. The questions in the magazine were just too vague with who she had in mind - Although the answers fit fine for Dan. They were general statements, vanilla and bland and ordinary, which sort of summed up the complacent niche they'd carved out in each other over the past month. _Maybe it wasn't love_, she decides, screwing her face into a look of genuine, pure thought. It wasn't that Dan was plain or boring, but their relationship _had_ been lacking in .. Anything but intimacy. And maybe he wasn't just trying to hurt her when he claimed she was 'only a fuck.' Just maybe.

Old scars meant small shirts with thin straps and low backs were a rare find, and it was only in the presence of a book and a bed sheet that she donned small, skin revealing attire like what she had on now. It was why she moved so quickly after feeling a warm kind of wind rush up her spine, ruffling the little blonde hairs on the backs of her arms and sending a shiver through her spine. It tickled, she laughed, and

- hers. Jono opens his eyes wide and steps back, realizing this isn't a daydream. This isn't a fantasy this isn't fantasy and this is as tangible as his guitar. _My guitar_. Gone now, he stands alone in what he recognizes far too well: The bleak landscape, the rain, the hazy, cloud-filtered light, the stagnant sadness.

- she's cold. It makes her shiver again, and she's stuck in the over-the-shoulder pose she took upon turning to face the intruder on her moment. Except now the intruder is _her_, in this place she's visited once for real. (But far more than that in dreams, to be sure)

_It's not an affair if it's not real. It's not real. It's not **real**. _In this place, it's hard to distinguish what she thinks from what he thinks from what she thinks and he thinks and back again. There's an echo that hints at the space of this place, that it isn't the small room with the open city it appears to be, but Tabitha ignores it and Jono does too; this is his mind, after all, and he can bend and change it to his will. _Reality has no hold here_.

Looking up at her, realizing he's crouched low like an animal in the midst of some hunt, he comes to terms with the fantasy in his head. This eidolon, the thought-form of the desire in the pit of his stomach (or somewhere else?) isn't the blonde girl with the funny skin, but the girl with the tight-kneed walk and hair in a constant state of flux, who he, under any circumstances, can't touch. Who can't possibly touch him.

Because this is as real as it gets. A psychic affair is still a psychic affair, and there've been countless souls in history that've destroyed something beautiful and perfect to satisfy some intangible lust in a place that doesn't even physically _exist_.

Regardless, his body grows tense and he pushes forward, moving from crouch to lunge to capture in the blink of an eye.

Watching him with wide eyes, she can't move quick enough to cover herself, to get her back out of the way. He's too fast, and already she can feel his hands against her, his chest against her back. It's an awkward position, sideways against each other, but they can manage. His hands find her waist, and for a moment, she's caught by surprise. What Tabitha had expected was a kind of playful roughness that bordered on the painful, and instead he was hugging her. The attempt to turn in his arms was cancelled, however, when his hands pulled away and his fingers found the grooves in the back of her shoulders, pulling down as if in an attempt to deepen the white lines that signified memories best left buried. He pulls hard, dropping one arm to loop it around her waist, before burying his face in her neck. _Like coconuts._ It's a funny thought to have now, but it's the first thing that comes to mind.

She pulls, he pushes, and they fall. Expecting hard ground, like the stone that she felt upon stepping in the first time, she's surprised to fall against something plush and warm. In the nick of time, Jono demonstrates just how unreal this place is, and how reflective of his emotional state it really is. Tumbling into the softness of something red and smooth, he saves himself from crashing headlong into the body beneath his. It's a clumsy save, and a strange one for the naturally agile teenager, but he's unfazed and presses onward, pulling at the clothes this fantasy wears.

The affection, it's worth noting, isn't anything horribly one-sided" Aware of the environment and it's variable state, of what's going on – And what they're here to _do_ - she has little problem with grabbing his hair and forcing a kiss that's better suited for the back of some club after a few beers than the borderline romantic atmosphere they're floating in now. There's no alcoholic aftertaste, but to her, he tastes like fire. (Like too much contained in too little with an itch to get out and tear everything material and worthless into shreds; like smoke and ash and something that tells her that Dr. Grey should _not_ have any designation as a 'phoenix' in the presence of this one) To him, she tastes like sweetness and like acid. (Like home and like sadness. Jonothon always mused internally that he could tell you about a girl from the way she tasted – Paige like summer fruit and hard summers – but this was something he couldn't possibly place, and it frightened and enticed him, in the way only teenage boys could possibly feel that combination.)

It's broken when he sits up, fumbling with the belt he wears as she glides only slightly less awkwardly out of her blue jeans. Grace is saved for movies and trashy novels, whereas this is as real as it gets: There are hands bumping hands, foreheads meeting, inept and confusing struggles to remove pesky clothing that, in the scheme of things, seem haphazardly beautiful; like organized chaos, as much of an oxymoron as it may seem.

Moving up as if to push him back, she attacks his chest, pulling and pushing and tearing at his t-shirt, almost crawling inside in an attempt to rid it from them both. He does this same, with the finesse of someone who's been here a thousand times before, despite the fact his hands shake only slightly. Where her efforts had been fast and without thought, no desire other than to see him without what he wore, his motions were nearly fluid; Hands against hips and sides pushing up, up, _up_. Like the way dancers bend and caress in perfect motion, things are settling down. Their motions synch and they're moving like two-in-one – those Stepfords would be jealous at just how close two can be – up and until –

Most girls don't let him do this.

She's never had her back against the bed.

It's a good feeling. It reeks of power and control and not-so subtle dominance, without being tyrannical or subliminally misogynistic. He wants this, even if he knows it's not her nature to submit so easily.

It's a good feeling. There's something incredibly romantic and passionate and perfect about it, even if she knows it's not his style to be so forceful and controlling.

It's one of those kismet moments, where even if they were thinking of someone else, it's gone now. He pushes and she pushes too, and whoever or whatever they could've been thinking about, they don't matter anymore.

Only once do their eyes meet. He hesitated because he was afraid there was something he didn't want her to see. She hesitated because she was afraid there was something he didn't want her to see.

As is turns out: Their fears were both unfounded, and behind what they both allowed their faces to betray, was..


End file.
